In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
Noble makes a good point. The tractor which is right for you will depend on your terrain - (and this has less to do with how much land you have to deal with, but much more about the gradients). Even for one hectare, if it is on a substantial slope, you shouldn't be considering anything under 40hp. If it is truly mountainous you should look at a wide tracked caterpillar (much more stable on cross slopes) probably 55hp.
Talk to your local tractor sellers: get them to come and look at your terrain. Don't be afraid of buying a tractor d'epoca (they are really rather sexy and have no difficult electronic parts!). Watch out for bad clutches (caterpillars have a horrendous number of clutches...). Look at spares availability (Fiat are good - which isn't to say Landini or the other marques you mention are not good - just I don't know). Beware the rotovator - if you have any rocks in the field they will eat rotovator blades - a morgano is much more resilient.
At the risk of repeating myself, ask your local tractor merchant. He'll know. Ask all of the local tractor merchants!
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
Noble, have you chosen the colour? Is your Lamborghini going to be red, yellow or creamy fawn? Just following up another thread.....:laughs:
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
One of my farming neighbours here in Ireland has a relatively modern Lamborghini tractor. It is an unexciting pale brown. Actually "creamy fawn" might just about do it.
I suppose I should really be a Ferguson fan, but I've always wanted a Porsche (tractor) in bright red.
[IMG]http://dethroner.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/porsche_junior.jpg[/IMG]
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
Thank all for the comments. Just to fill in a few holes in my plea, I can say that we have a plot of only a couple of hectares - not with any steep slopes or nasty bogs to worry our purchasing decisions with. It needs to be fairly low, due to the fruit trees that it will be serving (various heights, but the lowest are the benchmark) and 4wd, again, for the trees as the additional traction will help not to damage the roots we want and remove (some of) the roots we don't want. As far as HP is concerned, I think the old Fergie 35 was an excellent beast - although a bit too high for our current needs, sadly. You remember the grey ones?
And ...any Lamborghini MUST be in lime green, I always thought... something to do with envy, perhaps...
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
The Lamborghini is dull dull cream and if second hand then a touch of rust colouring too...soooooooo dull. We may even track down a nasty orange caterpillar tractor which will stand out a mile in our field, (we have no tractor shed). In the next village a German uses his Porsche tractor to take him everywhere locally. It looks so pristine all red an shiney so I doubt it has seen much mud!!! A big boys toy. Nardini you are so fortunate...fruit trees and flat land but do you sleep well on summer nights I wonder?
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
[quote=Noble;96378]Nardini you are so fortunate...fruit trees and flat land but do you sleep well on summer nights I wonder?[/quote]I (still) find that if I stay up until 1 or 2am - I sleep. Otherwise, I'm awake. Fortunately, with age comes short term memory dysfunction, so I can watch a DVD many times before I start to remember all the lines.
I quite like the orange/green ones - not the blue ones at all. they remind me of old Fordson tractors from my youth - ******* things! ;)
ETA: (edit to add)
I am tempted with this Valpadana 8080 - A shame it isn't a Valpadan[B][I]i[/I][/B]a though!
[IMG]http://www.autobarra.it/nuovo/foto/grandi/MACCHINA%20AGRICOLA%203.jpg[/IMG]
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
[quote=Charles Phillips;96339]At the risk of repeating myself, ask your local tractor merchant. He'll know. Ask all of the local tractor merchants![/quote]Thank you for all of your help, Charles - much appreciated. As you have seen from my later comments, I would like/need (not always the same, I know!) and have a bit of a shopping list of things to look for. Budget, of course, means that a new, shiny tractor is not on the cards - not even a red one! I have a certain experience of tractors in the past (something to do with coming from farming stock) so have a fairly practical list, believe it or not :winki:
I have no experience of the small articulated tractors that are reasonably common here, so I was hoping to find some help - or at least shared experiences - relating to them. The last "proper" tractor driving I actually did was some 20 years ago now - in a dirty great big 4wd Ford (hence my earlier comments about Ford) and appreciate that these diddy little tractors (although 80 HP isn't really that diddy, is it) can seem very much in the lawn "tractor" class of toys. A tracked tractor isn't really the ticket for such a small amount of land - and I will be adding a bit more before long - a couple of kilometres away. So you can see it would be more of a pain than it might be worth. Besides, we don't have any hills here in Padania! ;) OK, so I mean the Lomelina really.
Any more pearls, please?
We looked at tractors, our terrain is hilly and we are not used to driving/using a tractor and were told a caterpillar type would be best for us. Lamborghini was a favgoured make and we were told to look out for a second-hand one....friends still searching so cannot report more but hope it helps if you are not on the plain and are also a L driver!